I am so happy to participate in Sprite Write’s Virtual Advent Tour again! This is my third year of joining with Sprite to spread some Advent Cheer as we count down the days to Christmas! Thank you, Sprite for including me again this year!

Today, I want to share with you a bit of a childhood memory – Firestone Christmas Albums.

In the 60’s and 70’s the Firestone Tire store sold the most amazing Christmas albums (for the whopping price of $1.00) and I remember sitting in the car while my mom ran into the Firestone store on Pine Avenue in Holland to get the latest album.

The albums had the best music sung by varied artists – these albums were my first taste at hearing the Vienna Boys Choir and the Columbus Boychoir, and opera singers like Roberta Peters, Risë Stevens, Leontyne Price… and Mary Poppins…err Julie Andrews, Gordon MacRae, The New Christy Minstrals, and Harry Belafonte!

I can remember getting home from school and loading a stack of records onto the stereo (which was the most behemoth piece of furniture!) and singing along with them – for hours on end! Which was made easier as all the lyrics were printed on the back of each album.

I can remember my sister getting so angry with me and threatening me with great bodily harm if I sung one more word! Ahhh, yes… the best of times! Haha!

I knew that I could find some of the albums on YouTube but imagine my delight when I discovered a Firestone Christmas Album playlist on Spotify!! Friday night Happy Hour was a bit happier thanks to this playlist!

The joy of childhood memories – maybe not such simple times but made sweeter thanks to music.

What about you? Do you have Christmas Music Memories? Please share them, I’d love to hear about them!

Bonny stirred my interest last week with her review of Fox 8 – luckily my library had it and on Saturday I picked it up with a few other books, including a volume of Ted Kooser’s poetry (Thanks, Honoré!!)

I have been reading and rereading the poems in Delights & Shadows… and they are wonderful! This is a book I have added to my “need to buy” list!

I have been quietly working through Michelle’s Just Five Things prompts this week. The started out easy with gratitude and I found the lists just flew from my pen! Quiet, warmth, and comfort started out easy enough, but for each of these prompts – that last list was a struggle!

And, then today’s prompt – receive

It took a long time to write anything down and I have been thinking much about the personal struggle I have with receiving.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with my TGIF post…

Well…Everything!

Thinking About – Receive… from advice, to help, to compliments – these are things that I struggle with. I am that 3-year-old standing there obnoxiously shouting ‘I can do it myself!’ My thoughts today will revolve around improving on being a more gracious receiver!

Grateful For – An early Christmas gift! (THANK YOU, Steve!!) In my prior sewing life, I had a lovely serger, which I used all the time. Sadly, that serger went to the Great Serger Heaven years ago but then one day Mary planted a seed… and voilà – Welcome to my new Brother 1034D serger! I am so glad that Steve noted this Amazon Deal of the Day and then gifted it to me early! It made sewing the Carseat Poncho much easier! The hood was a huge challenge. Perhaps it would have been easier if it was not lined – but my daughter lives in the great white north of Traverse City and Genevieve is in the “refuses to wear a winter coat camp” (Just like her mother was, btw – lol!) I also struggled with making “arm slits” and solved the less than perfect attempts with some smart little flaps! All in all, this is a huge win! Although, my suggestion if you are making one and don’t live in the arctic circle, you might want to line it with flannel! The serger got more of a work out with my Dress No. 2! I used it to finish the edges – and while they are harder to see than Mary’s – I too want to just show everyone how lovely they are! Also…I LOVE the alterations I made on Dress No. 2! I did inseam pockets vs. patch pockets on the front and I also did a modification of this sleeve hack. I sewed the smallest size of the nested pattern I have, and honestly – I could have made it a bit smaller. But, the fit in the shoulders is perfect and it hangs beautifully – I will try and get some shots wearing it this weekend and share them with you all next week!

Inspired By – All the RÅSKOG cart ideas! (Thanks, Honoré for the heads up on this idea! The new serger is going to require a bit of a craft room reorganization! So, I have been looking at ideas on pinterest. Maybe this weekend I will drag Steve to IKEA for another RÅSKOG cart!! Haha!

Fun, fun, fun – We are in the midst of a bit of cold weather and that kind of weather just screams for the perfect cocktail… I am going to give these a whirl this weekend – if you watch my IG feed you will see how they turned out later today!

Also, Amaryllis Watch has begun…

That is all I have for this week. And, honestly… it makes me so sad that there are only three more Friday’s in 2018. Have a good weekend and I will see you all back here on Monday!

This morning SwissMissshared this… which made me stop and think, especially at this suggestion, “Next time I book a trip I might book it around a library I want to see.”Umm… YES! That! And, so I had to Google libraries to visit, which brought up these interesting lists:

Happy Wednesday everyone! It is snowing in Pittsburgh this morning and my little birdhouse votive candle holders on the Pergola are getting a dusting of snow! Light, fluffy flakes are falling and it is quite lovely outside!

However, if you are not in the midst of holiday making, perhaps you can come over to my house to help me with a few things I foolishly imagine I am going to get done between now and Christmas! Haha!

The Carseat Poncho is almost competed… almost. The hood is giving me some challenges. To line, or not to line… that is the questions! And I think I have them figured out… hopefully the solution in my brain is easy to translate to some fleece!

I also cut out 100 Acts of Sewing Dress No. 2 yesterday. And, I have the body together, complete with in-seam pockets! Once that hood is done, I will get the sleeves in and make some flannel bias tape!

I even managed to knit a few rows on my ADVENTurer shawl yesterday as well as some rounds of Peace Knitting!

In the reading department…

I finished the very emotional We Were the Lucky Ones. I simply loved it – it is beautifully written story of the Kurc family that survived the holocaust. They are Polish, and the story is fascinating. This was easily a 5-star book and I highly recommend it!

I also finished The Folded Clock: A Diary and it gets 4-stars. This is a curious read… the writer reads her decades of diaries she finds from her childhood and she is disappointed at how lacking she finds them to be. And, so she decides to begin chronicling her daily life as an adult to see if she can’t improve on the mendacity of daily life. It is a lovely collection of mediations – especially the E.B. White chapter! Oh, and the chapter on rearranging furniture! Her way of writing about “today I” is simple, but brilliant.

And, I re-read Warlight. I listened to the book this time and my love for this book has deepened. I know Bonny shared some of her recent favorites, and I agree with her – it is early to make best book of the year decisions… but Warlight is perhaps my favorite this year! It is a story that lingers in your mind. And, the writing…spectacular!

That is all I have for today… what about you? What are you making and reading this week?

And, as always, if you have written a post to share, please leave the link below!

It is dawning on me that keeping pace with knitting a full repeat each day on my ADVENTurer shawl is going to be a challenge. Last night, as I sat down to begin my Not-So-Peaceful Knitting again the reality of that fact became very apparent.

And, that is okay…

Because what could be better in the waning days of December to have something to look forward to beyond Christmas!

So, today on my list is to do some Peaceful Knitting and focus my mind on the joy of making.

And, to get outside to do some Peace Walking in the brisk cold air today – a very good way to clear out the cobwebs!

Happy Tuesday everyone! May your day be marked by spectacular moments of peace!

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About Me:

I am the mom of 3 amazing adult children and Nana to one precious granddaughter. I am a knitter and sometime spinner, a NPR junkie, gloriously liberal, a wanna be photographer, a voracious reader, a sometimes stitcher, and a lover of good food…